Heinrich events driven by feedback between ocean forcing and glacial isostatic adjustment

Abstract:

One of the most puzzling glaciological features of the past ice age is the episodic discharge of large volumes of icebergs from the Laurentide Ice Sheet, known as Heinrich events. It has been suggested that Heinrich events are caused by internal instabilities in the ice sheet (e.g. the binge-purge oscillation). A purely ice dynamic cycle, however, is at odds with the fact that every Heinrich event occurs during the cold phase of a DO cycle, implying some regional climate connection. Recent work has pointed to subsurface water warming as a trigger for Heinrich events through increased basal melting of an ice shelf extending across the Hudson Strait and connecting with the Greenland Ice Sheet. Such a large ice shelf, spanning the deepest part of the Labrador Sea, has no modern analog and limited proxy evidence. Here we use a width averaged “flowline” model of the Hudson Strait ice stream to show that Heinrich events can be triggered by ocean forcing of a grounded terminus without the need for an ice shelf. At maximum ice extent, bed topography is depressed and the terminus is more sensitive to a subsurface thermal forcing. Once triggered, the retreat is rapid, and continues until isostatic rebound of the bed causes local sea level to drop sufficiently to arrest retreat. Topography slowly rebounds, decreasing the sensitivity to ocean forcing and the ice stream re-advances at a rate that is an order of magnitude slower than collapse. This simple feedback cycle between a short-lived ocean trigger and slower isostatic adjustment can reproduce the periodicity and timing of observed Heinrich events under a range of glaciological and solid earth parameters. Our results suggest that not only does the solid Earth play an important role in regulating ice sheet stability, but that grounded marine terminating portions of ice sheets may be more sensitive to ocean forcing than previously thought.